Valley of old-media references

That would be Billy Joel’s Glass Houses album. (No, I’m not throwing stones.) Before “Sometimes a Fantasy,” you hear a phone being dialed: you hear ten tones. So, those carefree days when, not only did you hit only ten buttons (even dialed is a throw-back term, yes?) in order to dial a number — but hitting ten buttons implied that you were dialling long distance.

And before “All Night Long,” that late-night-TV invocation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — those days before 24-hour, 400-channel cable TV . . . .